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When the news broke that Susan Bayh had died, several memories of her floated to the forefront.

Strangely, the most prominent one may have been the most trivial.

It was from 1992. She and her husband, Evan, were campaigning in Evansville as part of a bus tour with the newly anointed Democratic Party ticket.

Bill and Hillary Clinton and Al and Tipper Gore were traveling across Southern Indiana in the company of the Bayhs. It was one of those charged moments in American history, a time when the nation was poised to make a generational shift in power. Bill Clinton was about to become the first baby boomer president.

The presumption was that Al Gore likely would succeed him in the Oval Office. And Evan Bayh, who was just in his middle 30s then, already was being touted as a future presidential prospect.

The future shimmered like gold for the three seemingly charmed couples.

Id interviewed both Bill Clinton and Al Gore but was lingering to gather more color when Susan Bayh spotted me. She was walking with Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore. She motioned for the two of them to come with her so she could introduce us.

The four of us chatted for a few minutes.

As we talked, I thought about the way things were changing in this country.

And the ways things werent changing.

It became clear within the space of just a few minutes that these three women were at least as capable and, in fact, were probably more capable than their husbands.

Yet, they were the ones struggling to determine what roles they could play as their spouses strode destinys stage just how many of their gifts these women could reveal without offending a state and nation that both wanted and feared change.

Flash forward nearly three decades to now.

Hillary Clinton is a lightning rod for much of the terrifying animosity loose in this land.

Tipper and Al Gore live apart, their union a casualty of their high-profile and high-stress lives.

And Susan Bayh, sadly, tragically, is dead.

She was only 61.

In these hours just after her passing, I find myself thinking about the heavy toll we impose on those who step forward to lead us. Too often, we strip them of their humanity. We consider them caricatures, rather than people who breathe and bleed just like the rest of us.

Susan helped me realize that.

I did not know her as well as others did, but she and I had some substantive conversations when she was Indianas first lady. In one, she described what making big decisions did not just to leaders, but also to those close to them. The emotional costs imposed on the entire family, she said, could be overwhelming.

At the time we talked, Susan and her husband often were dismissed in Indiana political circles as animate versions of Barbie and Ken dolls. People focused more attention on the fact that she had been a beauty queen Miss Southern California, no less than on her sterling academic record at two top-flight schools, Berkeley for her undergraduate work and the University of Southern California for her law degree. Nor did they seem to notice that, despite her youth, she held her own with the finest legal minds in the country.

Physical attractiveness can be both blessing and curse. The sheer sunniness of Susan Bayhs appearance, the radiance of her smile, in some ways obscured the depths of her character.

In death, the tendency is to caricature people once again, to sweeten memories of them to help make grief more palatable. This is particularly true when the departed could be as charmingly affable as she could be.

But to do so denies Susan Bayhs immense strength.

The guess here is that she watched over those she loved her husband and her twin sons, especially with the ferocity of a warrior priestess. She nurtured those she cared about, but she also saw that they were protected.

Susan Bayh did it with a smile on her face because thats what people expected from someone who looked like her. She did so because she was smart, certainly wise enough to understand that much.

Her family says her passing leaves this world a darker place.

Yes, it does.

May she rest in peace.

John Krull is director of Franklin Colleges Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

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KRULL COLUMN: Susan Bayh and the steel beneath the smile - Evening News and Tribune

RALEIGH In the winter of 1994, when First Lady Hillary Clintons plane became ice-bound in Washington, D.C., and she was unable to fly to Raleigh for her appearance as one of three keynote speaker for the ninth annual Emerging Issues Forum, university officials scrambled to find closed-circuit television technologies to turn her appearance into one of the states first-ever virtual conferences.

Something similar happened in 2010 when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was scheduled to speak about the creative visions for the future of North Carolina education, but was unable to physically attend the conference because of a Washington snowstorm. So he walked to his office, fired up an early virtual teleconferencing system and joined Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Manchester Craftsman Guilds Bill Strickland on the topic of crafting creative solutions.

Even in the earliest days of the internet and before Zoom became a ubiquitous platform, NCStates think-and-do institute has been charged with uncovering, considering and finding solutions for issues that will affect the lives of all North Carolinians, even if that requires technologies of the future to make sure it happens.

Next week, Feb. 15-18, IEI will host its 35th annual forum in Raleigh, four days of virtual meetings in the final installment of thewww.reconnectnc.orgseries.

What started in 1986 as a request by the late Chancellor Bruce Poulton to Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. to create an annual forum to address emerging issues has grown into alively nonpartisan institutewith a dozen and a half staffers, led since 2017 by Director Leslie Boney. Fittingly, the institute that was created in 2002 moved into the Hunt Library when it opened in 2012.

The idea for the forum and the institute that emerged from it was simple: to ask world and national leaders to consider issues identified by IEI that would face North Carolinians and to begin identifying solutions, from healthcare to biotechnology to education to the ongoing rural and urban divide.

I always wanted North Carolina to follow in its tradition of being first, says Hunt, a two-time NCState graduate and North Carolinas only four-term governor (1977-85, 1993-2001). I always wanted us to be on the cutting edge. I wanted us to spot the issues first and focus on what the cutting-edge ideas are that we need to know about, then begin to figure out how we could do something about them.

It was not a small undertaking. Initially, Hunt relied on his vast network of world and national leaders, making sure he had balanced voices participating. In 2005, when former Democratic President Bill Clinton spoke at Reynolds Coliseum, former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich also addressed the topic of Making Healthcare Work in North Carolina. The list of world thought leaders including former Presidents Clinton and Jimmy Carter, U.S. senators and representatives, cabinet members, business leaders and journalists is exactly what Hunts Facebook friends list would look like.

Its the kind of thing NCState ought to be about, Hunt says. NCState was created to involve the people and find practical ways of solving problems for the people of the state. We ought to be getting ideas out to the people, stimulating their ideas about those issues, and encouraging them to develop new and better approaches.

Some of that is done at a high level, general level. Some of its done locally. Theres always a need to spot the next issues. What has great potential to improve our lives? What do we need to learn about, and then what do we need to do about it?

First and foremost, IEI is about improving North Carolina. But its also about reaching out to the best minds on the planet to discuss the ways to make that happen.

We absolutely admit to having a North Carolina lens, Boney says. But we are agnostic about where a great idea comes from. It could come from another country. It could come from another state. It could come from a small town in eastern or western North Carolina.

We are idea enthusiasts. And so we try to collect ideas.

Hunt is the collector of idea-makers. As was always the case during his political career, few people could say no when he asked them to participate.

If youve ever been at the other end of a Jim Hunt conversation, it often concludes with a request, says Chancellor Randy Woodson. Whether its over the phone or in person, you can feel him grabbing your elbow, shaking your hand, gently pulling you forward, and then asking you the question Will you do this?

And everyone says the same thing, I couldnt say no to Gov. Hunt. Im so proud that NCState has been associated with the institute through the years. It has provided great leadership.

Everyone has that same bruise on their triceps, and Hunt almost always gets done what he wants.

Over the past few years, Hunt has stepped back and Asheville business leader Jack Cecil has stepped up as board chair. Boney was hired from the UNC System Office in 2017 to lead the institute and develop a different kind of outreach and engagement, turning the once-a-year forum into a twice-a-year traveling roadshow to include more communities across the state.

Boney has made some tweaks to the institutes charge and those changes have been the basis for the dozens of local and community initiatives represented in the Reconnect NC programs, showing how organic solutions can be scaled up for greater change. Topics were crowdsourced from engaged participants from across the state and ideas were shared at events in Asheville, Charlotte and Raleigh.

We started out with the idea that this was going to be a great chance for North Carolina to learn from the nation and the world, Boney says. Now, we are more likely to use the forum to learn from the nation, the world and our own communities.

Second, we have tried to ensure that we arent just sharing information at the forum and inspiring people and then going home. We want to do those things, then have them go find an organization in the state that can take an idea and do something with it, or find a way for the institute to move forward with that idea itself.

Third, the original idea was that the way change happens is top down, that someone hears an idea and passes a law. We hope that we are able to show that ideas can go from middle out. Change can be led by faith institutions in a community, local government, nonprofits or informal coalitions on a community level. More and more, we are paying a little bit more attention to the power of local communities to launch change.

In other words, even a forum dedicated to the idea of identifying emerging issues can find new ways to identify and discuss new and ongoing solutions.

Leslies leadership has really created this opportunity for more community engagement through community-based forums, really lifting them up across all the regions in our state, Woodson says.

1986: Innovation and Competition: The Challenge to America1987: Winning In The Global Economy1988: Taking Control of the Future. (featuring Bill Clinton)1989: Education For a Competitive Economy1990: Global Changes In The Environment: Our Common Future (featuring Carl Sagan)1991: Changes in Europe: Challenges for America (featuring Jimmy Carter)1992: Priorities for Americas Future1993: Strengthening America: New Economic Strategies1994: Investing in Health: An American Agenda. (featuring Hillary Clinton)1995: Conflict, Competition, Cooperation: Power Politics in a Changing World. (featuring Ambassador Madeleine Albright)1996: The Knowledge Explosion: What the Payoff for Americans?1997: Economic Forces: Shaping the Next Half-Century1998: People and Planet: A Fragile Partnership1999: Global Economic Storms (featuring Al Gore)2000: Shaping our Common Future2001: First in America: Charting the Course for Excellent Schools2002: Biotechnology and Humanity at the Crossroads of a New Era2003: Jump Starting Innovation: Government, Universities & Entrepreneurs2004: Creative Responses for Global Economic Change2005: My Health Is Your Business: Making Healthcare Work in North Carolina (featuring Bill Clinton)2006: Financing the Future (featuring Steve Forbes)2007: Transforming Higher Education: A Competitive Advantage for North Carolina (featuring U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings)2008: North Carolinas Energy Futures: Realizing a State of Opportunity (featuring Jeffrey Immelt)2009: Changing Landscapes: Building the Good Growth State? (featuring David Brooks)2010: Creativity, iNC (featuring U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan)2011: An Idea Exchange for Healthcare (featuring Indra Nooyi)2012: Investing in Generation Z2013: @Manufacturing Works2014: Teachers and the Great Economic Debate2015: Innovation Reconstructed2016: FutureWork2017 Focus Forum: Kidonomics: The Economics of Early Childhood Investment2018: Kidonomics: Investing Early in Our Future.

Fall 2018: Reconnect to Community (featuring David Brooks) | Asheville, NCSpring 2019: Reconnect to Rural and Urban | Raleigh, NCFall 2019: Reconnect to Economic Opportunity | Charlotte, NCSpring 2020: Reconnect to Technological Opportunity | Raleigh, NCFall 2020: Reconnect to Well-Being | via webinarSpring 2021: Reconnect for the Future | via webinar

(C) NCSU

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As Emerging Issues Forum goes virtual, a look back at its history of dealing with hot issues - WRAL Tech Wire

Mass shootings and other atrocities still afflict the country. But before Trump ran for office, that kind of violence usually emerged from the most troubled, most isolated people in society. Many killers found their inspiration online, at the extremesnot from anybody competing seriously for the top jobs in U.S. politics.

Politicians who ran as outsiders took extra care to distance themselves from anyone or anything implicated in violence. Ross Perot had no truck with that kind of extremism when he ran for president in 1992 and 1996. He may have held some cranky ideas, but his political behavior was straight-arrow. Anti-Iraq war groups hurled themselves into door-knocking, get-out-the-vote drives, and online fundraising and advertisingnothing like the turbulence of the anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s.

In 2008, Barack Obama faced intense scrutiny as a presidential candidate over his acquaintance with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who had been leaders of the domestic terrorist group Weather Underground in the 1960s. They had detonated bombs. The Weathermen never succeeded in hurting anyone outside their own organizationthree members of whom were killed by accidentbut that record was due more to good luck than good intentions. At one of the debates between Obama and Hillary Clinton that year, the moderator, George Stephanopoulos, pressed Obama to explain how he could have served for three years with Ayers on the board of an educational foundation and done a campaign event in the Ayers-Dohrn living room. Obama answered,

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, whos a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. Hes not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow, as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesnt make much sense, George.

Yet that was not enough for some. First Clinton, then the Republican nominee John McCain, questioned Obamas judgment and character. McCains running mate, Sarah Palin, accused Obama of palling around with terrorists. That charge was exaggerated to absurdity. But it was founded on a recognition that palling around with terrorists would be a bad thing for a president to do, if true. (The final word on its untruth was spoken by Ayers himself in 2013. Obamas not a radical. I wish he were, but hes not.)

A dozen years later, Trump draws support not from people with violent pasts, but from people with violent presents. He thanks and praises them. More than any politician since the days of Lester Maddox and Orville Faubus, Trump made violence integral to his political appeal from the beginning to the end of his presidential career. This is truly a change in American lifeand possibly a change that will be hard to undo.

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Its Not Only Trump on Trial - The Atlantic

Fear was the overwhelming emotion Alvin Major felt when, on a chilly November morning in 2012, he went on strike at the Brooklyn KFC where he worked.

Everybody was scared, said Major. He may have been fearful, but what Major didnt know was that he was about to make American history an early leader in a labor movement that some historians now see as the most successful in the US in 50 years.

Major was paid just $7.25 an hour as a cook at KFC, but the consequences of losing his job were dire, as his family was already struggling to make the next months rent. Everybody was scared about going back to work, he said. Nobody visualized what this movement would come to.

The New York strike by hundreds of majority Black and brown New York fast-food workers was, at the time, the largest in US history but it would be dwarfed by what was to come. Two years later, strikes had spread across America, and fast-food workers in 33 countries across six continents had joined a growing global movement for better pay and stronger rights on the job.

In eight years, what became the Fight for $15 movement has grown into an international organization that has successfully fought for a rise in minimum wage in states across the US, redefined the political agenda in the US, and acted as a springboard for other movements, including Black Lives Matter. It now stands perilously close to winning one of the biggest worker-led rights victories in decades.

This Tuesday, fast-food workers will walk out again, hoping to push through a change that will affect tens of millions of American workers.

For Major, now 55, it all began in a hall in Brooklyn, where union and community activists had convened a meeting of fast-food workers to see what pressure they could bring on an industry notorious for its low wages and poor conditions, and a state that had shown those workers little interest.

With a platform to speak, the workers talked about how you had to be on food stamps, get rent assistance, all these kinds of things, and were working for these companies that are making billions, said Major.

At one point, a worker showed the burns on his arm he had suffered at work. In a show of solidarity, workers across the room others rolled up their sleeves to show their scars too. Even when injured on the job, workers said, they were too scared to take time off.

This was not how Major imagined America to be when he moved to the US from Guyana in 2000. In our family, with 14 kids, my dads wife never worked a day. My dad used to work, he took care of us, we had a roof over our head, we went to school, we had meals every day, he had his own transportation.

In America, the greatest, most powerful and richest country in the history of the world, he found [that] you have to work, your wife has to work, when your kids reach an age they have to work and still you could barely make it.

Industry lobbying allied to Republican and until relatively recently Democratic opposition has locked the USs minimum wage at $7.25 since the last raise in 2009. Now a raise to $15 looks set to be included in Joe Bidens $1.9tn Covid relief package although it will still face fierce opposition.

Even Biden, who campaigned on the raise, has expressed doubt about whether it can pass. But more progressive Democrats including longtime champion Senator Bernie Sanders are determined to push it through, and it remains in the House Covid relief bill.

The stakes are huge. The Congressional Budget Office said this week that 27 million Americans would be affected by the increase, and that 900,000 would be lifted out of poverty at a time when low-wage workers and especially people of color have suffered most during the pandemic. The CBO also said the increase would lead to 1.4m job losses and increase the federal budget deficit by $54bn over the next 10 years.

Other economists have disputed the CBOs job-loss predictions the Economic Policy Institute called them wrong, and inappropriately inflated. The long-running debate about the real cost of raising the minimum age will no doubt continue. What is certain is that Biden will face enormous political blowback if his campaign promise to raise the minimum wage falls so early in his presidency a promise that during his campaign he argued was central to his plans to address racial inequality.

That backlash will also cross party lines at least outside Washington. The US may be as politically divided as it has been since the civil war, but polling shows the majority of Americans support increasing the minimum wage no matter their chosen party. In November 60% of voters approved a ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2026 even as they voted to re-elect Donald Trump.

More people voted for that ballot initiative than voted for either presidential candidate in the state. With Florida, seven states plus the District of Columbia have now pledged to increase their minimum wage to $15 or higher, according to the National Employment Law Project (Nelp) and a record 74, cities, counties and states will raise their minimum wages in 2021.

The movement, and this widespread support, has changed the political landscape, pushing Democratic politicians, including Biden, Hillary Clinton and the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, to back a $15 minimum wage, against their earlier qualms.

Cuomo called a $13 minimum wage a non-starter in February 2015. By July, he was racing California to get it into law.

In the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Clinton went from supporting a raise to $12 an hour to $15 as Sanders made ground on the issue. Even Saturday Night Live parodied the pair arguing about who was most for a $15 higher wage.

Big companies including Amazon, Target and Disney have all moved to $15, or pledged to do so. One of Bidens first executive orders called for federal contractors to pay employees a $15 minimum wage. The federal holdout would be the movements biggest win to date, but there is little arguing that they have made significant progress without it not least for Alvin Major, who now has a union job earning over $17 an hour working at JFK airport and who says he is no longer worried about his bills.

For Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), this is the David and Goliath story of our time. She puts the public support down to the pervasiveness of underpaid, low-wage work.

Every family in America knows somebody thats trying to make ends meet through a minimum-wage job. And the pandemic has revealed that essential work in a way that many people hadnt noticed before, and they now understand how grocery store clerks, nursing home workers, janitors, airport workers, security officers, delivery drivers [and] fast-food workers are all people trying to do the very best job they can, and provide for their families.

The SEIU has been a longtime funder and supporter of Fight For $15 and for Henry, the first woman to lead the SEIU, the fight for a higher minimum wage is just the beginning of a greater push for workers rights not least the right to join unions, in a service sector where women and people of color make up a disproportionate number of workers.

Eighty per cent of our economy is driven by consumer spending. Service and care jobs are the dominant sectors in the US economy, and we have to create the ability of those workers to join together in unions in this century, just like auto, rubber and steel were the foundation in the last century, she said.

If the US Congress cant see what the American people are demanding, in terms of Respect us, protect us, pay us, then theyre going to have a political price to pay in 2022, she added. Our nations leaders need to get this done. Congress has used its rules to pass trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires and massive corporations, so now its time for our nations leaders to give tens of millions of essential workers a raise.

Backing Henry will be a younger generation of activists who cut their teeth in the Fight for $15 movement and have used it as a springboard into a political debate that is now centered around racial and economic justice. One of those leaders is Rasheen Aldridge, one of the first to take action when the Fight for $15 spread to St Louis, who was elected to Missouri state assembly last November.

Aldridge was working at a Jimmy Johns restaurant in 2013 when he was approached by a community organizer asking him about his pay and conditions. Aldridge had recently been humiliated by a manager who took pictures of him and a co-worker holding signs they were forced to make, saying they had made sandwiches incorrectly and had been 15 seconds late with a drive-through order. It was so dehumanizing and just a complete embarrassment, said Aldridge.

The organizer talked about the strikes in New York, Chicago and elsewhere, and suggested the same could happen in conservative Missouri.

I thought he was crazy, said Aldridge. But he also thought: I have to do something. The worst thing that can happen is what? I get fired. And, its unfortunate, but I can find another job, another low-wage job, because theres just so many of them unfortunately that exist in our country and our city.

By 2014, Aldridge was a leader in the local minimum wage movement and building a network of contacts. Some of them were working in a nearby McDonalds in Ferguson that was next to the Ferguson Market and Liquor store where Michael Brown, an 18-year-old who had graduated from high school eight days earlier, was shot dead by the police after leaving the store with an allegedly un-bought package of cigarillos.

Aldridge heard the police cars rushing to the scene. The shooting led to months of unrest and, coming after the high-profile killing of other Black people, was a turning point for the Black Lives Matter movement. I remember I was in high school and I was wearing a hoodie and said, Im Trayvon, said Aldridge, referencing the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old shot dead by a neighborhood watch guard in Sanford, Florida.

I think after Ferguson, it really took off in a different way. I think the way we resisted in Ferguson was like no other, said Aldridge. Aldridge became an early BLM organizer in Ferguson. If it wasnt for the Fight for $15, though, Im not sure if I would have went out to Ferguson as quick as I did and would have been out there as long as I did.

For the freshman representative, Fight for $15 and BLM are the same fight.

You cant really talk racial injustice without talking economic injustice, he said. You cant forget that those same black workers still live in the same community that is oppressed, that is over-policed. Those workers were the same workers that also went to the streets of Ferguson, have protested, because they feel like Mike Brown could have been them, regardless if they was working at McDonalds or if they was working at a healthcare facility, said Aldridge. Its all connected.

Hopefully President Biden really follows through and does it, and makes it possible for everyone all across the state, all across this country, to make a livable wage. To not have so much burden on their back, especially in the midst of a pandemic.

For labor historian Erik Loomis, a history professor at the University of Rhode Island and author of A History of America in Ten Strikes, the Fight for $15 is one of the most significant victories for workers in 50 years. Although he has caveats.

It has been a huge success in conjunction with other issues in reshaping narratives around economic equality in America, he said. From Occupy Wall Street to the Fight for $15 to the #MeToo movement to BLM, Loomis sees a building movement for greater equality. For the first time in a half-century we are beginning to move in the right direction on this, in a way that, forget about Republicans, did not exist not only under Obama but under Clinton or Carter, said Loomis. This is the farthest left economic platform than anything you have seen since the 60s.

But, as he points out, the $15-an-hour wage Major and others were fighting for in 2012 is worth less than it was back then due to inflation, and will be worth even less in 2025, when a lot of states aim to hit that level. Nor has the campaign managed to establish unions in many fast-food outlets at least not yet. The answer is you just keep pressuring, said Loomis. In other words, dont be satisfied with $15. It is time for 20.

Many workers caught up in the movement are exhausted. While their hard-fought successes have made a big difference, many have been hit hard by the pandemic. Now they are worried that some have made gains, others will be left behind.

Management just has a way of knocking you down, making you feel useless, you are not worth $15

Back in 2010, Adriana Alvarez was earning $8.50 an hour at McDonalds in Chicago. The city voted to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour by July this year and Alvarez is now on $15.15.

Like many restaurant workers, she has seen her hours cut during the pandemic. But she is hopeful about the future. Before Covid-19, when her wages went up, I was able to fill up the fridge a little more, she said. She took her son to Winter Wonderfest, a gigantic annual event where Chicagoans can temporarily forget the citys bitterly cold winter and go ice skating and take carnival rides. It was something I had never been to. He had a blast. Hes scared of heights. He said, mummy, I have to try it. I have to get rid of my fear.

But the journey to her somewhat better life has been hard for Alvarez. Before the Fight for $15, she said managers regularly asked workers to work off the clock to finish jobs they hadnt completed on their shift for no pay. There was more shouting, more hostility. That has stopped now. They know we can show up with 50 people in a store, she laughed.

Along the way, she has met senators, she has a picture with Sanders, been on a call with Biden, welcomed the pope to the US and met workers from different industries, from teachers to airport and healthcare workers, who are also fighting for a better deal. She too has been surprised that the fight has been so successful. When people first started telling her they wanted $15 an hour, she said she told them they were crazy.

Management just has a way of knocking you down, making you feel useless, you are not worth $15, she said.

Now, hopefully, she said finally these politicians are doing what they should be doing. Last time it [the minimum wage] was raised was 2009. Its about time. Everything else has been going up. People have to work two or three jobs just to get by.

Does she feel like part of history?

Hopefully it makes history, said Alvarez. But I dont think Im part of history. Im tired, Im tired of being mistreated, of being underpaid and overworked. We want that $15 and a union. I guess you dont think about the whole history part until after its been done.

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'Hopefully it makes history': Fight for $15 closes in on mighty win for US workers - The Guardian

The people Weiss wrote about targeted both Clintons, but there was always a special venom reserved for Hillary, seen as a feminist succubus out to annihilate traditional family relations. An attendee at the 1996 Republican National Convention told the feminist writer Susan Faludi, Its well-established that Hillary Clinton belonged to a satanic cult, still does. Running for Congress in 2014, Ryan Zinke, who would later become Trumps secretary of the interior, described her as the Antichrist. (He later said he was joking.) Trump himself called Clinton the Devil.

For Clinton, these supernatural smears are part of an old story. This is rooted in ancient scapegoating of women, of doing everything to undermine women in the public arena, women with their own voices, women who speak up against power and the patriarchy, she said. This is a Salem Witch Trials line of argument against independent, outspoken, pushy women. And it began to metastasize around me. In this sense, Frazzledrip is just a particularly disgusting version of misogynist hatred shes always contended with.

Nor is the claim that shes a murderer new; its been an article of faith on the right ever since the 1993 suicide of Vince Foster, an aide to Bill Clinton and a close friend of Hillarys. Recently I spoke to Preston Crow, who, when he was a graduate student in 1994, created one of the first anti-Clinton websites, where he posted about things like the Clinton body count. (He has since become a Democrat, and he voted for Hillary in 2016.) Once you start following the conspiracy theories, its fairly similar, he told me. QAnon took it several steps farther.

Greene now claims that she no longer believes in QAnon. In a speech on Thursday, before the House voted to strip her of her committee assignments, she blamed her claims that leading Democrats deserve to die for their role in a diabolic pedophile ring on her inability to trust the mainstream media. I was allowed to believe things that werent true, she said.

To my surprise, Clinton thought Greenes passive account of her own radicalization wasnt entirely absurd. We are facing a mass addiction with the effective purveying of disinformation on social media, Clinton said. I dont have one iota of sympathy for someone like her, but the algorithms, we are now understanding more than ever we could have, truly are addictive. And whatever it is in our brains for people who go down those rabbit holes, and begin to inhabit this alternative reality, they are, in effect, made to believe.

Clinton now thinks that the creation and promotion of this alternative reality, enabled and incentivized by the tech platforms, is, as she put it, the primary event of our time. Nothing about QAnon or Marjorie Taylor Greene is entirely new. Social media has just taken the dysfunction that was already in our politics, and rendered it uglier than anyone ever imagined.

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Opinion | QAnon Believers Are Obsessed With Hillary Clinton. She Has Thoughts. - The New York Times